For Bhutan, I read Folktales of Bhutan by Kunzang Choden, which is the first attempt by a Bhutanese to record in English the oral tradition of this kingdom in the eastern Himalayas. For about a year when I was in the fifth grade, I devoured any version of Aesop’s Fables that I could get my hands on, so my inner child highly approved of this choice.

The stories reminded me of Aesop’s fables and Grimm’s fairytales (the dark versions with lots of gory violence, not the sanitized Disney retellings). There were lots of similarities to the fables and fairytales of Western literature–one story was a mashup of the Frog Prince and Rapunzel–but there were plenty of creatures and spirits completely new to me.

I had trouble finding a book I wanted to read for Bhutan, and when I settled on this one, I worried I would not actually learn a lot about the country. My worries were unfounded! I learned so much about Bhutan’s geography and climate, customs, traditions, clothes, and food. The stories showed the dynamics between young and old, child and parent, and rich and poor.

Spoiler alert: the storytellers of Bhutan are not wildly crazy about the rich. The rich folks in these stories are often humiliated, stripped of their wealth, or killed in some grisly manner while the poor find magical items or meet helpful monkeys who improve their lot in life.

This was a great pick for Bhutan, and I’ve already told one of the stories to my eight-year-old. It was about a goat tail that marries a princess–yes, you read that right. There’s also a story about a girl being eaten by a python that will haunt me until my dying breath. Still, goat tails and girl-devouring pythons aside, I wouldn’t be surprised if this book gets used by one or both of my kids for a school project sometime in the near future.